Any Way But Lightly
by Trialia
Summary: She's everything he wants, so he'll take her pain away as best he can. Tag for Revelations, sequel to Certainty. RoslinAdama.


Title: Any Way But Lightly

Title: Any Way But Lightly

Author: Trialia

Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (2003)

Rating: M

Word Count: 2675

Beta: Miss Cam (misscam)

Character(s)/Pairing(s): Bill Adama/Laura Roslin

Spoilers: _Revelations_

Summary: She's everything he wants, so he'll take her pain away as best he can.

A/N: Title from Vienna Teng, quoted line from Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_.

xxx

It helps her to forget, he knows, that she's sick, that she's in pain, that she's President, and, now, that she's led them all to an Earth destroyed by the fire and the winter of a nuclear holocaust; his being with her. Talking to her, distracting her, just being by her side helps her to forget all of it. She's told him so.

These things all hurt her, and of everything in the universe that he wants, for her to be free of pain is very near the top of that list.

He won't, here and now, think about what he wants most of all; he'll think only about Laura herself. His Laura: his lover and, in his heart, his wife. She's here, she's smiling against his skin, and she's his, just as he is hers.

She pulls him down to their pile of blankets and, as his lips meet hers while they settle to the floor of his Raptor, there's nowhere else he'd rather be.

He breathes her air, and his hands drift to unfasten the buttons of her blouse as she braces herself against his chest. Her eyes are closed, her head bent forward.

"I love you," she breathes as his fingertips stroke the skin between her breasts. Her voice is as ragged now as it was the first time she said it to him, and as he looks up to her face, he sees that the tears are back.

"Don't cry, Laura." He keeps his tone as light and tender as his touch; against her skin his own feels rough, wearied by work. She drags in a long, shaky breath, and when she opens her eyes, he can see pain and bliss both written plainly on her face. She smiles through her tears and he shifts her position against him to kiss them away, again.

_Ghost unlaid forbear thee, nothing ill come near thee._

The line floats into his mind as he brushes his lips gently over Laura's eyelashes, tasting the salt of her tears. He doesn't push it away; an old, Earth-credited passage, it feels right.

_I will protect you_ he promises without speaking, arms close around her slight frame and mouth trailing her jaw. He can't protect her from cancer, more fool him, but he'll do it from everything else that he can.

"I can't lose you."

He doesn't realise he's whispered the words aloud until a sob escapes her and she clutches him tighter, burying her face in his neck.

"Shhh, sweet," he murmurs, the endearment falling surprisingly easily from a tongue unused to saying such things. With her, it feels natural. "I love you," he says at last, flicking his tongue lightly against the shell of her ear. She shivers.

_No tears, Laura._

He's determined, now: he'll make love to her beyond the point where she'll forget pain, sadness and tears, the state of Earth and her own death; past his own memory of those things, too, until there is nothing between them and nothing in the world but the two of them. Bill and Laura: for and with only each other.

His hand slides up the back of her neck with a caressing gesture, carefully removing the black wig that covers the thin growth of soft, baby-fine auburn hair on her scalp. She lets him, tilting back her head to make it easier. He prefers to see her as she is, though he doesn't mind the wig as much as Laura seems to. He understands why. But she's still beautiful.

She always will be, to him.

That out of the way, he kisses her hair, breath warm against the short strands; she arches her neck, eyes closed once more, a tiny sound pulled from her throat.

She's so delicate, here in his arms; so light.

The thought vanishes in an instant when Laura pulls his mouth back down to hers, shrugging off her shirt and rocking her hips against his, tearing a groan of desire from his throat as she kisses him: deeply, fiercely. He gives all of himself to her in return, stroking the tip of his tongue around the inside of her lips, knowing what it does to her - the response is exactly what he'd expected as she moans into the kiss and her hips buck, involuntarily, against his - before tugging her lower lip gently between his teeth. The sound she makes then is almost a growl, impossibly arousing.

It's a battle, a dance, a duet. Everything he can think of fits, for this.

She's biting the edge of his chin, now, so lightly, kissing the stubble he never paused to shave off between finding Earth and visiting it. Her small hands are cool under his shirts as she slides them up, leaning away from him for a second to pull them over his head; she's already stripped him of his jacket somewhere between their descent to the floor and this point, and he makes a frustrated noise over being unable to see her, even if it's only for a moment.

She's smiling when he can see her face again; it's neither her usual polite, tolerant talking-to-the-press-and-Quorum smile nor the gentle, relaxed twinkle she so often wears when they're alone. Instead, the look she's giving him is all fire, a welcoming heat he can't resist.

Careful not to hurt her, he flips her onto her back. It's not hard; under those power suits, she's been a wisp of a woman since even before she lost so much weight. He remembers that from the first time he held her, way back on the first Colonial Day after the Cylons came. She giggles briefly in surprise before gasping a little as his fingers brush over her breasts through the utilitarian black bra she's wearing. The sight of the dark fabric in contrast to her pale, faintly freckled skin is sexy as frak... _Just like her,_ he thinks as he reaches around her back to unhook it. Laura lifts herself slightly to allow him access, pressing her body against him; she's a damn good distraction, but he continues, eventually pulling it free and down over her arms as she casts it aside.

His mouth is on her before the fabric has even cleared her wrist, and she arches to meet him, supporting herself with one elbow and the bulkhead as he bends down. She's panting a little as he tongues her left nipple to an even harder peak than the cold has made it, finger and thumb toying with the right; her other hand gropes at his shoulder with no regard for the way her nails are raking him. He doesn't stop her; the pain only enhances the pleasure he's feeling at being able to have her this way, here in a Raptor, half-naked and so unguarded beneath him.

She says something. Her voice has dropped into a lower register than he's ever heard from her, so it takes a second or two for the actual words to register through the haze of lust in his mind stoked by their tone.

He releases her nipple to look at her face, replacing his mouth with his other hand. Her eyes flutter closed for a moment.

"I didn't hear that," he confesses, and she smiles, opening her eyes to look at him, her lids heavy.

"I said 'you're wearing too much'."

He doesn't waste time resisting her implied command, cursing as his pants get caught on the boots he didn't think to remove first. He hasn't undressed that sloppily since he was a rook; it's her effect on him, he knows. It takes him longer than it might have otherwise, given that Laura's shimmying out of her woollen skirt in front of him; he can't help but pause a heartbeat or several to watch her, swallowing with a throat suddenly dry, as she deliberates over the removal of the black cotton panties underneath it. The skin of her inner thighs is a little darker than the rest, his brain notes absently as he stares, drinking in the sight of her. Conscious thought has gone elsewhere. He sways forward on his feet, just looking at the naked beauty before him and wordlessly desiring.

If it weren't for the flush rising from her chest to her lovely face and the unsteady, rapid rise and fall of her breasts with her breathing, she could be a sculpture. She already is a work of art; he looks at the years that have touched her body and knows, somehow, that she's only grown more beautiful with time.

He closes his eyes, ever so briefly, in an attempt to regain some of that lost control. He can't get rid of the image of the feline smile on her face.

Suddenly, there is warmth and softness against his back; he blinks and grins, folding his arms over Laura's as she wraps herself around his waist. The feel of her naked skin against his is nothing short of beautiful. He knows some people believe he doesn't acknowledge, or maybe doesn't even recognise, beauty, but Laura? She knows different. He's so hard it almost hurts, and his eyes close again at the thought of tasting her, of making her writhe under his hands and mouth until she cries out his name...

He's startled out of his erotic reverie by her warm murmur of his name against his throat; her hands have suddenly shifted, one running down and over his hip, fingernails trailing his skin lightly, so close to his erection he's almost sure she's going to touch him there.

No matter how much he wants it, he knows she can't. Not yet. He's not sure he'll last, if she does, no matter the stamina he's gained with age. Not with this woman.

Gently, he removes her hands from his body and turns around, taking one hand back. He pulls her back down to the blankets by that hand, firmly, and curls himself and her beneath one of them, back on top. It's too cold to be without some kind of cover, here, despite the heat the two of them are generating. One palm slides deliberately up the inside of one of those silky-soft thighs, and Laura's eyes fall shut, her hips pressing up toward him.

"Please," she whispers.

She doesn't have to ask twice; doesn't even have to ask once, really, as he already had plans for her tonight.

She cries out, he thinks at the shock of wetness, when his tongue flicks over the bud of nerves in the light, barely-there patch of curls at the juncture of her legs; she'd clearly been expecting his fingers to touch her first, but he's still stroking her inner thighs, on his knees in front of her. He nudges her gently upward with a hand, folding a blanket beneath her hips to lift them so he won't break his neck, and with that, Bill Adama settles into his long-held dream of finding out what Laura Roslin tastes like.

Slightly sour, pungent, and strong: something not far from Leonis' spiced tea with a note of something else. He feels like a connoisseur, for the first few seconds, but quickly loses himself in Laura, in what he's doing to her and the ways she's responding. He explores her methodically, noting as many details as his lust-clouded mind will allow him; nibbling and sucking at her labia, lightly, makes her arch against him, clutching at what she can grab of his hair and pressing him deeper between her thighs. He doesn't mind at all; all he's breathing is her, heat and dampness and the scent of her, that elusive quality in it he knows he'll be trying to trace every time they do this, after. But he loves it; loves her, wild as she is like this.

She groans when he curls first one, then two fingers on the slide into her, now sucking her clit between his lips, now licking it. She can't stop herself moving now, tiny thrusting movements from her hips letting him drive and press, stroke and scrape his hands and mouth closer against her, further inside her. He glances up, not moving his head, to look at her face; the expression she's wearing is something he'll remember for the rest of his life.

He knows he's found another spot to please her when she makes a little whimpering sound he can barely hear, as he touches her in just the right way. Devoid of concentration on anything but her, he can't help moaning her name against her flesh. The sound that provokes from her is more noticeable, and so much higher-pitched than before that he tests it further, just humming against her; her voice rises, louder and more inarticulate than she's ever been. At this point, she seems able only to call on him and her gods. He feels a flush of pride at that.

It's not long before she is close to climax. He can tell by the way her breathing changes; by the way she arches like a cat while her body goes almost completely still, a tension and trembling in every limb. He doesn't slow the pace of his fingers, but he stops alternating movements with his tongue, simply latching onto her clit and sucking hard.

The long, low groan that breaks from Laura's throat as she shudders against him, and the sudden, dam-breaking flow of her juices against his mouth as he strokes her, gently, with his tongue, prolonging her orgasm as best he can: all this is more to him than he's ever dreamed. And he _has_ dreamed; waking up as aroused as he is right now, his sheets and his body drenched in cooling sweat, his mind only on her.

_This is so much better._

She falls back a little to rest against one of the pillows in their nest of blankets, her eyes still only half-open as she gazes over at him.

"Gods, Bill..." She trails off, still lost for words, granting him a beautiful, languid, satiated smile, another look he's sure he'll never forget. He runs a hand up her thigh again, lowering his body over hers as she reaches out to draw him down to her. He knows she wants what he does: to be as close as they can be and closer still.

It's like nothing in the world, the sensations and emotions that come in the rush of being inside Laura, the heat and moisture, his adoration for her and the knowledge that he's finally, _finally_ _home_. She is where he's always meant to be. His thoughts, now, have fled as far away as hers, and he's acting entirely on instinct, just as she is. Making her lose control is something he'd celebrate, if it weren't for her doing exactly the same to him, right now. There's nothing in the world but Laura.

They're dancing, again, and she's louder than before; a deaf person could probably hear them, if anyone were here. But they're not and she is and he can't let go of her; can't break this spell he's under; doesn't want to.

Her legs are wrapped around his, her hands clutching at his back; his face is buried in her neck, one hand between them where their bodies are joined, the pace of his thrusts increasing with Laura's gasps and moans of pleasure. He still can't think clearly through love and lust, and doesn't care.

When he feels her muscles begin to quake, he knows he can't hold back much longer. In the last heartbeats of her second climax, she tightens around him on purpose and he is gone, utterly lost and at the same time, where he's always wanted to be.

After, they're cuddled close above and beneath the blankets that were given them, falling asleep in each other's arms beneath the stars, even if they are inside a Raptor. The scene is vaguely familiar to them both.

"I love you," he tells her, again.

She grins, sleepily. _Adorable,_ he thinks.

"About time."

_-fin_


End file.
